Unbender Tine . I'm currently working on a Hanna stax deck with the obligatory Mana Crypt and Sol Ring in addition to a number of creatures with strong abilities such as Master Transmuter, lands with strong abilities (Bazaar of Baghdad, Serra's Sanctum) and other mana rocks such as Grim Monolith. I came across the Tine and was thinking it could be a solid ramp piece but at the same time it is also quite expensive at 4 cmc. Does anyone have any experiences playing with it? Was it worth it?
I think Liliana of the Veil only makes the cut in reanimator decks as the self-discard is worth a lot there. She's really good there though as she pressurizes your opponents at the same time as helping you.
Allosaurus Rider will likely be a bust but the damage has been done. Due to price memory the speculators are guaranteed to make a profit.
Do speculators really earn a lot with a card like this? On MCM over the last 8 days there has been only one day in which someone bought one. Won't it just sink back down eventually because demand is so low?
Did you add desktops around the deck: [:] at the beginning and [/:] (substituting deck for : )? In addition you need to add a 1 (or another number) in front of a card for it to show up in the list.
In your list Bloodghast and Gravecrawler are other good recurrable creatures. Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat gain value from sacrifices. I also think your deck can benefit from some more draw: Dark Prophecy, Necropotence, Night's Whisper and Sanguimancy are some good ones. Lastly Nythkos, Shrine to Nyx is very good in mono color lists as you'll naturally build up a lot of devotion.
As already mentioned it mostly depends on the deck. Generally with 4 cmc generals you will want to have mostly rocks at 2 cmc, with a 6cmc general Coalition Relic and Worn Powerstone become very strong. Overall I would say that the more competitive the deck (and thus the faster the metagame) the more rocks you will see (with exceptions of course).
I think there is really no reason to play 3 cmc rocks outside of Coalition Relic, Worn Powerstone, Basalt Monolith and perhaps Chromatic Lantern. There are enough other rocks that even on a budget you don't need to resort to 3 cmc rocks such as the keyrunes or cluestones.
In the end I think the set looks very nice, both from a draft and a value standpoint. If you can get a box at MSRP you should generally get your input back with a reasonable chance of going over it if you pull one of the top mythics.
I am however very disappointed in the choice of lands. Mix of tempest pain lands and mirage fetchlands would have been great to reprint at common or uncommon. Some of those at least see play in EDH whereas the lifegain lands see play nowhere.
Contagion would have been nice to see in modern border too.
I have read the threads on old-border foil cutlines and generally the consensus is there is no difference in prices. I saw a couple of foils with large color differences that I liked recently (white - > yellow/orange, light blue - dark blue) and I was wondering if this would still apply or if large color differences would put a premium on the price?
You have some really great cards here! Fiery Rebirth seems really cool, as does Blighter of Paradise... Blind Eternal and Raise the Rats are also great. Lots of great stuff here.
I think Kri, Last of the Eagles could have vigilance though. In comparison to Shadowmage Infiltrator it has more conditional draw and not dealing damage in comparison to less power and now hexproof.
I also like your land designs a lot.
I think Painful Truths, Dig Through Time, and Treasure Cruise are necessary - they create so much advantage for little mana. Electrolyze seems weaker after the banning of Yisan, but the other burn spells seem pretty good too.
These rules would destroy the format. Faster combo decks and MLD are the only things keeping ramp decks in check. Red and white pretty much lose most of the worthwhile reasons to play them (as their strongest elements are hate cards in various forms). If you want to have any chance to win, there would be no reason not to play some form of UG control and such an archtype would pretty much have inevitability.
I think Narset, Zur and Kaalia are the best. Once you are swinging with them mass land destruction should always win you the game. Narset and Zur are top tier generals so they are playable in any setting.
Boros is actually very weak at capitalizing on the advantage that mass land destruction can give: it has neither the cards to quickly build up a board presence that is unbeatable after an Armageddon, nor does it have the best ways to recoup the lost card advantage. Generals like Zur, Geist of Saint Traft, Narset, and similar are much more effective at using mass land destruction as once you have them on the field they have a significant board presence, have protection/card advantage and can quickly close the game. Boros doesn't have the right generals to capitalize on such a sequence nor sufficient hate bears to make a sequence of turn 1 - creature, turn 2 - creature, turn 3 - creature, turn 4 - Armageddon viable. Gisela + Armageddon is nowhere near viable in a competitive meta, same with Obliterate.
In a competitive meta building around Ruination / From the Ashes / Blood Moon is more effective as competitive decks are often very greedy with their mana bases and you can make these effects one-sided.
But until Boros get a general that can quickly close out a game (e.g. 1RW - 2/2, flying haste, +1/+1 for each opponent with a non-basic land or something to that end) or a general that provides a strong hate piece in the command zone (a RW legendary Thalia / Eidolon of the Great Revel / Gaddock Teeg etc.) it will remain underpowered in competitive metas.
Do speculators really earn a lot with a card like this? On MCM over the last 8 days there has been only one day in which someone bought one. Won't it just sink back down eventually because demand is so low?
In your list Bloodghast and Gravecrawler are other good recurrable creatures. Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat gain value from sacrifices. I also think your deck can benefit from some more draw: Dark Prophecy, Necropotence, Night's Whisper and Sanguimancy are some good ones. Lastly Nythkos, Shrine to Nyx is very good in mono color lists as you'll naturally build up a lot of devotion.
I think there is really no reason to play 3 cmc rocks outside of Coalition Relic, Worn Powerstone, Basalt Monolith and perhaps Chromatic Lantern. There are enough other rocks that even on a budget you don't need to resort to 3 cmc rocks such as the keyrunes or cluestones.
I am however very disappointed in the choice of lands. Mix of tempest pain lands and mirage fetchlands would have been great to reprint at common or uncommon. Some of those at least see play in EDH whereas the lifegain lands see play nowhere.
Contagion would have been nice to see in modern border too.
This is one of the ones I've been looking at magiccardmarket
I think Kri, Last of the Eagles could have vigilance though. In comparison to Shadowmage Infiltrator it has more conditional draw and not dealing damage in comparison to less power and now hexproof.
I also like your land designs a lot.
In a competitive meta building around Ruination / From the Ashes / Blood Moon is more effective as competitive decks are often very greedy with their mana bases and you can make these effects one-sided.
But until Boros get a general that can quickly close out a game (e.g. 1RW - 2/2, flying haste, +1/+1 for each opponent with a non-basic land or something to that end) or a general that provides a strong hate piece in the command zone (a RW legendary Thalia / Eidolon of the Great Revel / Gaddock Teeg etc.) it will remain underpowered in competitive metas.